Can't budget an inch

As I've mentioned several times so far in this space, I'm a big fan of playing fantasy sports with my friends. (Non sports fans, please stick with me on this for a little bit. I'm just starting with sports here before moving on, so there's no need to turn the e-page.) I participate in baseball and basketball leagues every year, as well as a March Madness bracket game that's currently kicking my ass. For baseball this season, we decided to change things up. Instead of each team taking turns to select a player, we switched to an auction format instead.

As you might imagine, that means that players go to the highest bidder. Every team starts with the same amount of money, and at the end, everyone needs to have 23 players on the roster. I was very concerned about this because budgeting my money hasn't always been my strongest suit. In fact, as a kid, it may have been one of my worst skills.

I got a job at a restaurant in a mall the day I turned 14 and was legally able to get a work permit. In hindsight, I'm very thankful that my parents put me in that position because I think it instilled a work ethic early on. At the time though, I was thankful for a different reason: spending money. I was putting most of each check away in savings, and since I was making a whopping $4.25 an hour for the first six months, that didn't leave me with too much in my wallet. Therefore, I had to spend wisely, right? Well, that didn't exactly happen. Right across the way in the mall was a Sam Goody music store. I spent my 15 minute breaks there and sometimes a lot of my half hour lunches as well. Inevitably, I would walk out with a cassette single almost every single time. I remember talking myself into buying some of them: "Yeah, that's a pretty good song I guess. Maybe the B-side's really good. It's only a few bucks, and maybe they'll become my favorite band." This happened a lot, and so I ended up spending my money while I was making it.

I didn't get much better in high school. One would think that by bringing a lunch every day, I wouldn't have the need to spend money on anything more than possibly a snack. Yet for almost all of my sophomore and junior year, I ate my lunch at "Nutrition" and then bought something for Lunch 2: The Sequel. There was a pizza cart designed to increase body fat and acne percentages on campus. A mini pizza was $2, and Dusty and I got one practically every day. I know that's not a huge expense, but it certainly added up. I should've pointed out to my mom that I was a growing teenage boy and found that I needed more food each day, but instead I spent money because I had it. Things only got worse senior year when we could leave campus, because Lunch 2: The Sequel became much more costly at places like You're the Boss. Daily $5.00 sandwiches really added up, but the money kept burning a hole in my pocket.

I eventually got better at budgeting on my own and a hell of a lot better with my wife's influence. She stops me from getting every dog toy I see for Hallie, because the bucket o' toys is already more than full. Still though, my parents think of me as someone who spends money as soon as he has it, and it's all because of one story from my youth that I can't outrun.

I was probably in the 12-14 age range when I went to Disneyland with a group of friends. It's an all-day event, so my parents gave me some money to cover lunch and dinner. Things are really expensive there too (and I'm sure they've gotten much worse since my last trip), so they gave me around $20 for the day. We got there and began walking around through the candy shop before we got to any of the rides. I bought a little bag of candy that didn't break the bank and kept moving on. Then we got to the magic shop. We all looked around, arguing over which masks were the coolest, etc. And then I saw it: the fake plaster cast. Shaped like a C, if you put it on and kept your arm against your stomach, it looked pretty real. So I bought it with almost every last cent I had.

There were two main problems with that decision. First, it was still 8:00am and I didn't have enough money for lunch and dinner. Second, I didn't think about the fact that I'd have to carry it around with me all day. It all worked out ok, as I was able to borrow money from my friends so I didn't die of starvation. Also, it got me and a friend to the front of a line because I was "injured." However, it's the quintessential example of my horrible budgeting sense as a kid, and my parents still bust it out from time to time. "That's great about your raise at work - are you gonna get another fake plaster cast?" (It's always "fake plaster cast" too, never just "fake cast" for some reason. And every time I think of it, I get "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead in my song. I thought you'd like to know that.)

In any case, I was very nervous about spending all of my allotted fantasy dollars on one great player and then having to pick up horrible guys to fill out the roster. "Be patient," I kept telling myself, "let everyone else spend their money and there will still be good players available." Sure enough, I spent a good amount on one guy early on, but then I exercised the proper restraint. In the end, I actually had $1 left over even. I was as surprised as anyone. Today's lesson, gentle readers, is that people can change their tendencies over time. Especially if they keep telling themselves, "There's no reason to download that song. There's no reason to download that song. Close the application and back away."

Have a great day, and remember to email ptklein@gmail.com with things for future posts or Follow Up Fridays. The vehicle report is currently empty, and frankly, that shit ain't right.

Trading Jones

Can he do it, folks? Can he stretch the sports theme through Thursday until he gets to Follow Up Friday? Oh, it's a definite possibility.

I wrote about the NBA draft a bit yesterday, but today's NBA topic is a more timely one: the trade deadline. Today is the last day of the season that teams can make trades, whether little draft pick swaps or blockbuster deals with major superstars. The means that for the past month or so, every basketball fan has been thinking of ways to get a good player on his or her favorite team without giving up anything good. Of course it rarely plays out that way in real life, but we stay true to our teams in our imaginary deals.

As of this morning, the big trade speculation around the league is that the (my) Lakers are trying to pry Jason Kidd away from the Nets. If you don't follow basketball, all you need to know about this scenario is that Jason Kidd is a good player who could possibly fit well with the Lakers. Here's the problem: the Lakers have said that they're not going to part with three players in particular (Kobe, Odom, and Bynum). Therefore, the offer can't be anything that the Nets would actually consider, most likely. That hasn't stopped me from imagining the Nets taking two or three of our bench players for one of the best point guards in the league. More annoyingly, it hasn't stopped sports talk radio hosts from debating (for hours) whether the Lakers should give up Odom or Bynum for Kidd. They're not going to do that, and they've said as much, yet the hosts will still fill up time discussing something that shouldn't even count as a hypothetical. Deep breaths, Peter, deep breaths.

Another interesting part of the trade deadline is the valuable commodity of "expiring contracts." Those are players whose deals end after this year, and therefore their salaries will come of the books. Teams will trade for these players to free up money for the future. The funny part about all of this to me is that everyone will make fun of some egregious contract for years and then suddenly, solely by virtue of time passing, the player becomes a commodity that other teams want. In one of my dream scenarios, the Lakers are able to trade just expiring contracts of bench players for a star. "Sure, we'll give you Mihm and McKie, and we'll only take Tim Duncan off your hands in return." That's not gonna happen, but that's the kind of thing that goes on in the heads, inboxes, chatrooms, and IM boxes of NBA fans for weeks around this time of the year.

Guess what? That got me thinking. What would happen if trades were a part of real life, complete with yearly deadlines? I have obvious untradeable assets (yes, I'm including you, honey), but what could these deals look like? Would a family trade expiring contracts (paid off car, daughter about to leave for college with a full scholarship, etc.) for another family's sports car? The second family would definitely get under the salary cap with that move, maybe just in time for an addition to the family (free agent). Hmmm, now that I re-read that, it could possibly be the stupidest idea I've ever written. Normally I'd erase it, but I'm short on time this morning, so it stays. Can I trade that paragraph and an earlier post for five quality paragraphs that actually time some of this crap together?

Regardless of whether I can relate this to real life or not, it's an exciting time. Every once in a while, a big name that nobody expected to get traded will suddenly be switching jerseys. That's why we keep talking about it, because if one of these deals should happen, we'd be cool for thinking of it. My guess is that Jason Kidd stays put, as do all of the other big names that have been thrown about. It's almost always a letdown after the deadline passes, but we only have to wait for the offseason for the chatter to start up again.

Switching topics (because I can't squeeze more out of that one), my friends and I are getting our fantasy baseball league together. We've been doing this for years, and it's become a pretty standard practice by now. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Greg said that he wanted to change things up for this year. I said I'd like some changes too, but it turned out that we were on different pages. Here's how I'd describe it: Say we're a rock band. We've been together for a while and put out four pretty successful albums. We're getting a little tired of our sound though, and we want to branch out creatively. I suggest that our next album have a running theme throughout it and that we have a couple of songs that sound different from what we typically do. Nothing drastic, just something that gets our fans to turn their heads a little and say, "Wow, that's funkier than normal, but I kinda like where they're going with this." Greg says, "I was thinking along similar lines. Let's do a blues-meets-ska album and really blow this up to make it fun and interesting." See what I mean about different pages?

I wanted to tinker, he wanted to change. I fought pretty hard on this for a little while, and then something happened. Greg sent a website link with a demo of how the new system would work, and it was really cool. Now, as shocked as anyone, I'm trying to convert the others over to the new system. I'm not afraid to change my mind when provided ample evidence, and Greg presented his point so well that I suggested he run for Congress. So now I'm pumped up about fantasy baseball this year and excited about trades that will never happen in the NBA. Not too grounded in reality, one might say.

That person would be wrong though, because I get my dose of reality in the form of American Idol. I know, I know, but it's actually pretty compelling television. Tonight, the final 24 gets cut down to 20, and I have a pretty good sense of who one of the departing ones will be. I'll miss saying his name in the coming weeks, but Sundance Head had the worst performance of the two dozen.

Gentle readers, do you watch this show? I know most of America does, so let me know if you do. If so, I'll pontificate more frequently on this big ole slice of Americana. If not, I'll try to spare you the details of something that doesn't interest you (like Chris Mihm's contract). Finally, the rambling is coming to a close. I'll be back tomorrow with Follow Up Friday, where lots of space is still available. Email ptklein@gmail.com for your chance to be famous on the Internets.